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# 2022-05-31 - Head Hunting in the Solomon Islands by Caroline | |
# Mytinger | |
Portrait of author and friend | |
# Acknowledgments | |
[An Irish Ferryman got the idea that the authors needed money.] So | |
on the far side of the lake he dug down into his pocket and brought | |
up three shillings which he offered to us, apologizing for the amount | |
by saying that at least it would buy us a spot of tea some time when | |
we needed it. And if we felt indebted we should just pass it on some | |
time to someone else who needed a few shillings. The knowledge that | |
such human goodness is abroad carried us along almost as much as the | |
less abstract help we received. And it still keeps us from coming | |
unstuck in a world of hates between nations and peoples and | |
individuals. | |
# Chapter 1 | |
We were a staff of two rather young women: myself, the portrait | |
painter [the author, Caroline Mytinger, is also the portrait | |
painter], and Margaret Warner, the bedeviled handyman, who was | |
expected to cope with situations like God--if machinery was lacking, | |
then by levitation. Her expedition equipment was a ukulele. | |
The purpose was to make a pictoral record of... headhunting | |
cannibals, called Melanesians, who inhabit the islands bordering the | |
Coral Sea northeast of Australia. Their territory begins on the | |
mainland of New Guinea in the north and extends through the Solomon | |
Islands clear to New Caledonia in the south. | |
[The very simplicity of our plan and purpose] shows, perhaps, just | |
how mature we were when we set off on our project. Scope is the one | |
thing we had plenty of. But possibly, too, those disbelieving | |
friends had a case when they said no female outfit such as ours could | |
go alone to paint headhunters and come back with their own heads. No | |
man had done it. No man had yet tried, we replied. | |
[They planned to pay their way as they went by earning money through | |
portrait commissions.] | |
All this time we were reading anthropology, everything written about | |
human beings that was available for borrowing from public and | |
university libraries. It was not a highbrow choice; reliable | |
accounts of peoples are actually the most exciting literature there | |
is, stranger than fiction. | |
... it took us over a year to earn our way with portrait commissions | |
to the heart of Melanesia [from San Francisco]. | |
... being on an expedition that was earning its own way was much more | |
like being on a Winnie-the-Pooh "Expotition." Anything could happen. | |
# Chapter 2 | |
[On a steamer ship with about 50 passengers.] | |
The technique was simple. Margaret would ask someone to pose for me | |
"just for fun," then everyone else, seeing what a remarkable likeness | |
came out of the cigarette tin [of art supplies], would scramble for a | |
sitting. Toward the end of the trip if there were any laggards they | |
would be rounded in if only by shipboard ennui. | |
Margaret is the only player I have ever known who could make a | |
ukulele sound like a musical instrument, and her repertoire ranged | |
from everything to keep dear old ladies awake to the sort of thing | |
that made a captain's foot wag. [To keep them entertained and | |
sitting still while their portrait was being drawn.] | |
With so many opinions [about taking quinine as a preventative measure | |
for malaria, or waiting until you got malaria before taking quinine] | |
we had to settle the matter for ourselves, and we thereupon decided | |
to settle it for all expeditions to come by becoming experimental | |
guinea pigs. Margaret would continue her daily doses, and I would | |
drop them. | |
# Chapter 3 | |
All the elements present on the [steamer ship] Mataram which should | |
have combined to make the journey a profitable one for us... were | |
reduced to exactly zero... by the shock of the Malaita affair. | |
A week before [the author's passage] Malaitamen in the mountain | |
village of Sinarango had murdered an entire government party! | |
... the usual conservative press referred to it as a "massacre" and | |
an "uprising"... | |
There was a curious atmosphere on board the Mataram, rather hard to | |
describe because those who expressed it were British and not | |
American. Where Americans would have been yapping and speculating | |
endlessly, these Britishers clamped down their long upper lips over | |
false teeth, and waited. They hung over the radio bulletins... | |
....they conveyed something extra by staring in silence at one | |
another after each remark. | |
Without ever having met a Malaitaman we could see that they had no | |
love for their employers. | |
We now heard that the planters and missionaries of Malaita had | |
evacuated the island; women even from other islands were coming into | |
Tulagi for safety. | |
# Chapter 4 | |
The planters as they appeared in Tulagi full of revenge were set to | |
drilling eight hours a day under the hot sun with the intention of | |
sweating out of them the idea of being a volunteer army. They had | |
stuck it out and in the end got regular military status with army | |
pay, rations, and a [commanding] officer. But one of the irregular | |
rations they had demanded and obtained was a quart of good whiskey | |
per week per man to be taken as a MEDICINE for malaria. Everyone | |
took it as a preventative, naturally... | |
[The steamer Mataram was destined to continue on the Malaita. The | |
author and her assistant chose to go on to Malaita with it.] | |
# Chapter 5 | |
My fingers were swollen, banana-sized, by the exercise and heat of | |
last night's gaiety [at a dance]. | |
We had heard a lot about the laziness of these "black swine" [the | |
dark-skinned laborers] on the trip up, but I had never seen men of | |
any color work so fast. These first Melanesians were surely unlike | |
any other aggregate of men in the world. | |
# Chapter 6 | |
[At Su-u] The missionaries and planter's wife were refugees in | |
Guvutu and Tulagi, and the planter himself, the remaining white man, | |
was staying on his launch [at] nights for safety. From what? | |
Business was going on as usual this day. | |
# Chapter 7 | |
The natives scattered from the villages and the white avengers burned | |
those villages, destroyed gardens, and left the entire mountain | |
district "greatly chastened." ... to destroy the food of even an | |
enemy was inconceivable... in this port country. Seven of the | |
prisoners died in jail while still awaiting their trial... Of the | |
remaining captives [about 100], six were found to be the actual | |
instigators of the murders, and these were hanged... Of the | |
remainder... several were given lengthy jail sentences... and the | |
rest were returned to their mountains properly subdued. A suddenly | |
paternal government provided them with enough rice to keep them from | |
starving... | |
What was the cause behind this wholesale murder? The government | |
party that was wiped out had been on duty attempting to collect taxes | |
from the Sinarangoans. ... the natives have no voice in the | |
administration of their affairs. "Taxation without representation" | |
is what we called it. On the other hand, the mothers of large | |
families were given a bonus... Unless the lagging birth rate is thus | |
stimulated, the naive population decreases and the source of | |
plantation labor dwindles in proportion. And without cheap native | |
labor it would be unprofitable for any nation to hold these islands. | |
They also "encourage" the natives to work on plantations where they | |
are personally exempt [from taxes if they work.] | |
Looking at it from the native viewpoint--as if there should be any | |
other!--these taxes seem to pay only for the privilege of being | |
deprived of liberties. | |
Then how is it that a people reputedly so tough and so far | |
outnumbering the whites can have been induced, without wholesale | |
bloodshed, to relinquish their freedom? The process is known as | |
"peaceful penetration"--a most exquisite piece of machinery such as | |
could have been devised only by God-sent Empire Builders. | |
Inoffensive missionaries are the real trail blazers, sometimes | |
preceding even the Empire Builders. Encouraged by the island | |
administrations they make their honestly peaceable calls on villages | |
which have never before had any contact with white men--then later | |
comes the patrol officer. | |
The guv'men man is a nice fellow, lavish with presents of tobacco, | |
calico lap-lap, and the much-needed axes, and if some chief seems to | |
think he smells badly, the patrol officer simply flatters a rival | |
sorcerer by appointing him headman (with a pretty cap and belt) over | |
the head of the one who won't play. This cap and belt do the work. | |
It is then the duty of the new headman to see that the natives have | |
ready the tax coconuts for the patrol officer when he returns the | |
following year to collect them. The officer departs, doling out a | |
little more tobacco to any noisy grumblers, and the next year he | |
returns, collects the taxes, lays down a few primary taboos [legal | |
restrictions], and adds a threat of jail to any delinquents if they | |
fail to pay up the next year. It takes time but good Empire Builders | |
are patient. The following year a few truculent villagers have to be | |
made an "example" of by being taken down to jail at the coast | |
government station. And from then on "control" is complete, and the | |
operations of "peaceful penetration" proceed up higher into the | |
mountains. | |
... in the interior of Malaita, newly visited villages often told a | |
government patrol officer to go to hell; if he poked his offensive | |
head in the clearing the following year, or any year after, it would | |
be promptly bludgeoned. This is what the Sinarangoans told the | |
government man on his first call there, and when he turned up the | |
following year--the year of [our] Expotition--that is what they did. | |
# Chapter 9 | |
We sail close in shore before a fine following wind, with the ocean | |
head a gently danging expanse of diamonds--no color to it, no blue | |
anywhere, with the sun on top. The jib boom... soars up and up as | |
the boat lifts on a swell, straight up past the shimmering horizon | |
into the sky, then ever so slowly pokes down into the glittering sea. | |
And up again. Flying fish spray out with the foam before the prow, | |
their iridescent wings motionless, tails flipping violently as they | |
hit the water to take off again. There is the sweet creaking of the | |
main sale boom tugging at the mast and these little tunes taut ropes | |
sing; and all the while the gentle gushing sound that water makes | |
when it is running with the boat. The wind is blood temperature and | |
in this flawless moment we feel as if we love and are loved very | |
deeply. | |
[In a storm, the engine stalled and the author's supply case with all | |
her tools and work went into the sea. They recovered the supply case | |
later, but it had been submerged in the ocean.] | |
# Chapter 10 | |
For the first week at Ruavatu we did nothing but try to salvage | |
drawing materials and nurse our other supplies back to health. The | |
supply trunk must have stayed in the ocean for some time because even | |
after the contents were taken out there was about a foot of water in | |
the bottom of it. | |
Those hundreds of crayon pencils, being waterproof wax, should not | |
have been damaged, but the wood of pencils is made of two sections | |
glued together, and these all came unglued. | |
When the full extent of the damage had been realized we tightened our | |
belts, held out heads, and wrote out a long, expensive radiogram to | |
an art supply firm in Sydney requesting a waterproof oil painting | |
outfit, no matter how heavy it was to carry. But sending a radiogram | |
in the Solomon Islands is not a simple matter even if you have the | |
gold it costs. The wireless station was at Tulagi and Tulagi was | |
thirty miles away. Also Ruavatu had no launch. ... on account of | |
the Malaita war... the radio talk-talk therefore had to be given to a | |
runner who theoretically tore off with it for Berande. The Mastah | |
there would then take it two Tulagi on his next trip and when the | |
Mataram returned in six weeks the art supplies would be on it. | |
But these were not ordinary times. The very vibrations of the | |
Expotition's approach always seemed to create an extraordinary time. | |
# Chapter 12 | |
It was a secret yearning of many Americans in this driven span; the | |
wish to relax, to be beautifully ambitionless and amount to | |
nothing--but with an excuse that the Puritans would approve of. | |
And here we were on a tropical island forced to live the dream life. | |
[Due to a measles epidemic.] | |
From the United States to eastern Europe the natives swear by grain | |
alcohol as a means of forgetting reality. From the west coast of the | |
Americas to about the date line in the Pacific escape is achieved by | |
means of the raw juices of a variety of pepper root, called Kava. | |
The betel-nut area extends from Melanesia to India and identifies | |
these users as one big cultural unit distinct from the Oceanic kava | |
sots. And the [Asians] distinguish themselves by going for narcotics. | |
[The author and her assistant tried betel nut and didn't like it.] | |
... and if the experiment decided anything it is that the habitual | |
betel-nut chewers of the world must be almost a desperate and hardy | |
as we were during Prohibition. | |
The rows of [coconut] trees must be precisely thirty feet apart, so | |
that the same amount of sun reaches the ground everywhere through the | |
tract. All this orderliness would seem to delete any beauty, but it | |
is that very orderliness that makes the plantation so beautiful. The | |
impression inside the stand is that of a vast cathedral. There are | |
acres and acres; great columns of cool, gray trunks, ringed to a rich | |
texture where the old fronds have fallen off, all towering evenly to | |
fifty or sixty feet from the ground. The ropelike roots above the | |
earth form an ornamental base to each pillar, and at the top is a | |
rich capital of clustered taupe-colored nuts with flags of | |
henna-brown fiber. From there the great strong arms of the fronds | |
sweep out to meet those of neighboring trees, forming a groined vault | |
ceiling with interstices of criss-crossed leaflets. With the white | |
sky piercing through, the effect is of intricately designed leaded | |
glass. | |
Then there is the soft footfall of holy places, for the entire temple | |
is carpeted evenly with clover or sensitive plant (which helps keep | |
down tall weeds). The sensitive plant unrolls a gray rug ahead of | |
one, for even the vibrations of one's approach are enough to wilt | |
these hypersensitive leaves. The spiny shadows of the palm fronds | |
are violet at the gray pillars, deeply blue on the green carpet. | |
There is perspective not to be seen in full sunlight; there is | |
loftiness and distance, yet one feels sheltered--which is the comfort | |
of churches. At night there are even the lamps of the faithful. | |
Fallen palm fronds are gathered into piles and burned, and these | |
pyres are everywhere down the long avenues, lighting the surrounding | |
pillars and ceiling in an eerie orange glow and filling the roof with | |
smoke. When the moon is full, sending down its white shafts of light | |
through the fronds and smoke, the rays look like those coming from | |
heaven in the old church pictures of the Nativity. The | |
late-afternoon sun illumines the whole cathedral with sharp fingers | |
of light which beam out from the shafts so that even the shadows | |
gleam. Those X-rat planes of superimposed patterns make a "modern" | |
masterpiece, but even so, the picture is one easier to describe than | |
paint. | |
But it is not until one rides out through the plantation just after | |
sunrise that one sees the handiwork of the hidden insect life. The | |
spiders, which must have worked all night, have stretched gigantic | |
webs from one pillar to the next, catching the points on low-hanging | |
fronds. The night's dew is still on them and, fanning out in the | |
dawn's breeze, they glitter in the oblique rays of the morning sun. | |
Curtain after curtain of these strung diamonds turns the cathedral | |
into a fantastic fairyland. | |
# Chapter 13 | |
For every plantation has either a store or a stock of trade goods. | |
The planter doles out the weekly shilling wage, then figuratively, or | |
even literally, hops over his counter and takes back the shillings | |
for everything on God's green earth from defunct peroxide (to bleach | |
the hair) to alarm clocks... There is government price regulation, | |
but it cannot be enforced unless there are complaints of violation. | |
[IOW, company-store style exploitation] | |
Lime, made from powdered coral rock, is the time-honored delouser, | |
but applied to the scalp it also bleaches the hair. | |
Chapter 14 | |
[The author received an invitation from a stranger to visit | |
Tanakombo, a plantation at the west end of the island.] | |
The real war of these islands, the most persistent and everlasting | |
and vicious, is not the one between white invaders and the dark | |
people who own the land, nor the feuds between the natives | |
themselves, nor yet the one between all humans and the bacteria and | |
insects and heat. It is the fight of men, both black and white, to | |
get and keep foothold on the land. For without unceasing vigilance | |
the vegetation would push the puny human beings right off the islands. | |
The plantations keep herds of cattle, not for meat or milk but to | |
graze down any sprouting undergrowth. | |
... stray banana trees with their huge purple seed hanging toward the | |
earth--something so "artistic," and frankly biological-looking that | |
Georgia O'Keefe should always be posed with a propagating banana tree. | |
Even while I was shaking with cold my nose was hot. Something had | |
happened to the back of my neck; it felt as if it had been hit with a | |
club. My eyeballs must be on rubber bands hitched to sore places in | |
my brain, for every time I moved my eyes I could feel the stretch | |
clear to the back of my skull. And my spine hurt and all my muscles | |
and joints, and my skin felt raw and dry even while it was cold and | |
wet. And I felt very tired and dizzy and hot and cold--and utterly | |
miserable. I had "it"--malaria. | |
Only the colt and Margaret, who had been taking preventative quinine, | |
escaped. | |
My malaria turned out to be the favorite kind: intermittent. It was | |
intermittent in forty-eight-hour attacks for about a week and then | |
quiescent until I caught another chill. | |
But after the attacks were definitely over, there was a period of | |
curious elation and energy during which i got more work done than in | |
any normal time. | |
# Chapter 15 | |
It was her voice that best prepared us for our new misses. In the | |
dark of the beach as we landed over the surf, and above the road of | |
this, had come a cultured English voice exclaiming with un-English | |
enthusiasm, "Oh, I'm SO glad you could come right away." ... Then | |
hastily, "I get so lonely here by myself." The first appeal toward | |
endearing one human to another: that one is needed by the other. | |
... after dinner we were sitting in a row along the south veranda, | |
our legs in pyjamas as mosquito protection, and those legs | |
comfortable up on the veranda railing. Margaret and I had our | |
"wha-whas" (ukulele and guitar) and we were all singing those find | |
old English madrigals which sounded magnificent under the huge roof. | |
The sky to the south and east was changing tones like one of those | |
color organs. There was something special about eh evening; perhaps | |
it was relief from the storm of the afternoon. The Misses suddenly | |
pulled her legs up like a little girl, "Oh, I don't know when I've | |
felt so jolly!" | |
# Chapter 16 | |
The wharf strike was still on in Sydney and no one was getting any | |
freight... there were no paints for us. | |
He [the captain] thought he was being funny, cheering us up, and he | |
HAD struck something. Sail canvas? What was the matter with it? | |
And boat paint? It was not permanent, but what of it? Our studies | |
would all have to be copied anyway. It was pigment and we could mix | |
colors with it. | |
The Voy turned us loose with the ship carpenter and the first thing | |
we got was ten pounds of white-lead paste. It was poisonous and | |
dangerous for a painter to use... The read lead... was a fine | |
vermilion. Then there was a quart of black paint and some spar | |
varnish. That was all the pigment we could get. From a large bucket | |
of brushes we chose some well-made varnish brushes which we proposed | |
cutting down into smaller brushes. We could have all the turpentine | |
and linseed oil we wanted, and we took it. | |
While the Mataram was still loading... we had broadcast our need of | |
pigments to the planters on board, and all week long tins of paint | |
were coming in by runner. We got the most awesome collection of boat | |
and housepaint that ever came through the bush. Most of it was | |
half-used and dried to a paste--which could not have been better for | |
our use, because we wanted paste pigment. But the colors! | |
Everything from liquid yellows to sour greens; almost everything that | |
is known to be impermanent to the color chemist. | |
[The book contains many details about making their own brushes, | |
easel, frames, etc.] | |
These were native women doing what Melanesian Maries have done for | |
centuries: bringing in the harvest from the gardens. And behind the | |
line, about ten yards to the rear, was a Melanesian man doing what | |
men have been doing for centuries. Rather, he was the vestigial | |
remains of a traditional masculine inactivity. The man was not | |
exactly young but he was not so old and weak that he could not have | |
been carrying something when even the children were seriously | |
burdened. Yet all he had in his hand was a dainty cupid-sized bow | |
and some arrows. He was simply a tradition, a male "protection" to | |
the pack-mule females. Today, in the government-controlled villages | |
along the coast, there is naturally no danger of raids, but the | |
custom of sending a male escort with the women persists. | |
["Maries" was the old missionary name for women.] | |
# Chapter 17 | |
Painting at last! And this was the fun end of the picture; the first | |
unafraid hour when one slaps on the big color patterns. You feel | |
like God making things grow on a blank canvas. Then follows the | |
shaping up when objects are given bulk, and lines greater meaning. | |
But as the detail grew on my canvas I began to forget my admiration | |
for my own godliness in wonder at the artistry of the [natives] who | |
had built those huts. ... these were no shacks. The hut nearest me | |
was architecturally as well proportioned as the Parthenon; the deep | |
thatching of the roof was just the right "weight" to balance the area | |
of the front wall; the width of the whole was right for the height, | |
and the construction throughout was beautiful. There was not a | |
slipshod piece of workmanship anywhere. Those little... bungalows, | |
made with only an axe and knife (modern), were as trim and sturdy and | |
altogether all right as the houses one would see in any civilized | |
self-respecting community. But the true artistry of these | |
structures, which was almost marked enough to have been | |
sophistication, lay in the total absence of any unnecessary material. | |
And no material had been tortured into an unnatural form to make it | |
look like something else. ... everything that had been done as a | |
necessity had been done so painstakingly that it had become | |
ornamental. This was functionalism of a high order, and it did the | |
heart good. | |
It was some time before we saw the interiors of these huts and we | |
found them just as satisfactory as the exteriors. | |
This construction of the bed with bamboo slats also had another | |
virtue which we learned about later. Heat is one of the time-honored | |
remedies for bad spirits that lodge in the body and hurt a fellow. | |
So, if [someone] aches, a mound of hot rocks is put under the bed, | |
and the heat comes up between the slats of the bead and bakes out the | |
spirit. (After we heard about this we began treating our island | |
sores with dry heat... and got much more rapid healings.) | |
# Chapter 18 | |
However, it was impossible to do anything without these men because | |
the women could not understand much pidgin English. And evidently | |
the women could be reached, both lingually and ethnically, only | |
through their husbands. | |
Anything we gave a woman for posing, her husband would naturally | |
take, because he owned her; she was only a pack mule. | |
[The native women] do not work half so hard and long as the average | |
American farm-wife, partly, of course, because all of living is so | |
simple and there are no artificial standards of what is decent. | |
The average birth receives as much delicate attention as and a whole | |
lot more privacy than it does in our society. | |
... the men do all the muscle work; the felling of trees for house | |
timber and the building of the houses, clearing for the gardens, as | |
well as enough liter work like hunting and fishing to keep them | |
equally busy with the women. The care of the children is shared, for | |
after the nursing and toddling period little boys accompany their | |
fathers through the day and little girls their mothers, each learning | |
as play the jobs they will have as adults. Thus by the time the | |
villager is adolescent he [or she] is bearing his [or her] share of | |
the community work, unconscious of its being work as he [or she] is | |
of breathing. | |
Somehow, whatever there is about a female is simply poison to a man's | |
industry. Fishing canoes sink, papaya trees wither and die, and pigs | |
fail to reproduce if we pollute them by touch or even by being | |
present at the wrong time. | |
# Chapter 20 | |
She never thanked us, because no formal expression of gratitude is | |
known to Melanesians; the return gift is the form. | |
The reason the babies never cried, we discovered, was that they were | |
never denied anything they asked for. If a whimper did start up it | |
was plugged by the breast being shoved into the baby's mouth. | |
There was the most surprising indifference toward Art here; not even | |
the models appeared to be interested in their own likenesses. They | |
had to be ASKED to look at them, and if the other women were asked | |
for an opinion they just cackled. | |
... this was one of the villages where the youngsters began | |
experimenting with the urge as soon as they were old enough to feel | |
it. The parents were so very indulgent that they just thought it | |
amusing. And as the young girls never became pregnant until after | |
they were married--for some reason even scientists do not understand | |
fully--no one had a substantial reason for being prudish. | |
# Chapter 21 | |
When the New Year came around we were in the west islands on a | |
plantation in the "largest land-locked lagoon in the world." There | |
was a superb vista of Marovo Lagoon from the backhouse at Segi. | |
The view was a different from that of a coast plantation as if we | |
were in another part of the world. It was intimate, cozy; the sort | |
of thing one reads about as an "island paradise." All up and down | |
the lagoon, which we could see from the throne on the hill, was a | |
labyrinth of little coral-made islands and waterways that had a | |
varying depth and a snow-white coral sea-bottom. That made the clues | |
of the water every shade from deep purplish ultramarine to peacock | |
and robin's-egg blue. And there were streaks of tender green and | |
yellow where the coral castles reached near the surface. | |
There was a strong tide current through the lagoon but somehow the | |
water never got rough, and in between spring tides the surfaces were | |
so glassy that all the cozy little islands and sunset clouds were | |
reflected in it like a mirror. Gone was the constant roar of the | |
surf, the churning of it, and the sight of squalls passing out to | |
sea. Here at Segi the silence and stillness of everything was the | |
kind that let you hear your own heart bumping. | |
Sartorially we had gone native. Night and day, at the plantations | |
and painting in villages, we lived in men's shapeless pyjamas because | |
they were the coolest protection from insects... But our guilt was | |
that we did not seem to CARE--not until these holidays came to remind | |
us of another life we had once lived. | |
Also, something we had not seen on women elsewhere, these three had | |
long hair which stood up in a great round ball around their faces. | |
It had the surprising effect of making them look feminine in a normal | |
human way. | |
# Chapter 23 | |
So far as models went it was a holiday painting in Marovo Lagoon. | |
The ex-headhunters were handsome, intelligent, unsuspicious, pleased | |
to earn a few sticks of tobacco (though they preferred shillings), | |
and one and all thought the pictures we painted were miracles. They | |
were subjects which portraitists dream about but never meet in | |
civilization. | |
# Chapter 24 | |
We never could understand for a long time why Europeans ate expensive | |
tinned fish when there were oceans of fresh ones all around them; and | |
we continued eating fresh fish whenever we were on our own until one | |
day we broke out with what we called "fish mouth." [The author | |
writes more about this in chapter 32.] | |
The attitude toward professional artists in Melanesia was naturally | |
very interesting to us. The professional artists are the canoe | |
carvers and mask carvers and they are hired to make things just as | |
are our commercial artists. Their products are respected, but | |
neither the villagers nor the artists themselves regard artists as | |
personages deserving special privileges, as we do. They are still | |
obliged to carry on their traditional work in the village, helping | |
others to build their houses, clearing the bush for gardens, and | |
hunting and fishing, exactly as are the other men who lack talent. | |
All villagers, both men and women, make all their own decorations for | |
everyday use, such as carved food bowls and lime containers. Objects | |
for ceremonial or communal use, however, are made entirely by | |
professionals; and as all such property is endowed with metaphysical | |
significance there are taboos against the making of it. | |
[A local carver used a pencil to draw the author and her assistant. | |
He drew them in the same style that he carved canoes with. See top | |
of this log entry for a link to the resulting portrait.] | |
Referring to Maike's portrait of the Expotition again, it will be | |
noticed that he gave me a highwayman's mask. [This represented the | |
author's countenance while dealing with struggles] ... of the lowest | |
ebb in our spirits of the entire painting venture so far. | |
[The author began to go blind as a result of tropical sun glare while | |
painting. She speculated that while scientists thought the anatomy | |
of their eyes was no different, there must be some reason why the | |
native people never went blind from sun glare.] | |
The instant i put [diving] goggles on I had the solution to painting | |
in the tropics without going blind. They made my eyes like a | |
native's. Where the native's eyes are deeply set with a projecting | |
awning of prominent brow ridges and bushy eyebrows, small eye | |
openings, and high cheekbones to shut off some of the glare from the | |
ground, the diving goggles (with the glass knocked out) sheltered my | |
eyes all around in the same way. The goggles proved to be a godsend, | |
for I never afterward had trouble with my eyes when I wore them. | |
# Chapter 25 | |
We [Americans] are the carnivores of the human species, dreadfully | |
scented according to the [Asians], while the Melanesians, like the | |
Chinese, are almost vegetarians and so only mildly fragrant. | |
# Chapter 26 | |
A few years ago--anyone who turned his [or her] radio on then will | |
remember very well--there wailed through our air, night and day, a | |
song by that name. Those who like good tunes will remember "Night | |
and Day" as a very good tune indeed, and that is all it will mean to | |
most. But for your Expotition it is a melody both horrible and | |
wonderful, a kind of past-delirium... | |
Many a meal had we sung for, and many a model both white and brown, | |
had Margaret held enchanted with her music while I lopped his [or | |
her] head onto canvas... | |
In Ongong Java it is the custom, one a year, for the young | |
marriageable girls, stripped entirely naked, to walk in procession | |
with their clan chaperons around the village clearing. Betrothals | |
are arranged in infancy, but the girl appearing in the procession is | |
a sign to her fiancé that she is ready for marriage. The dark | |
bodies shone with coconut oil which they dressed themselves for this | |
important debut... They were rounded about the thigh, the torsos | |
were long and elegant with smooth shoulders and high breasts. One | |
did not look at their faces even in the photographs. Chances are the | |
young patrol officer didn't either even in the flesh, nor care much | |
that the girl he saw in the procession was already "taken." | |
# Chapter 28 | |
The usual charge for transportation anywhere in the islands is by the | |
day; $5 a person whether the vessel is a Sydney steamer or a put-put | |
launch. And there is no guarantee of getting you there. No matter | |
how long the trip takes, com fair weather or foul, whether the engine | |
lisps or the skipper would rather go on a reef than use his [or her] | |
anchor or sail, a passenger can only set his [or her] teeth and keep | |
on paying a pound a day till some sweet providence sees him [or her] | |
in his [or her] home port. | |
The toilet proper was a round hole in the wide shelf of the taffrail, | |
in front of which a blanket was hung from the awning roof. [It had a | |
pleasant view,] even though like a French pissoir it gave the | |
occupant the illusion of privacy while declaring to the world, by the | |
feet extending below the blanket, that it was engaged. | |
But WHY were we going south? | |
He was going on a recruiting trip! | |
Recruits for the New Guinea gold fields were then bringing in a | |
hundred dollars a head in Rabaul, they were hard to get because the | |
news had got around the islands that carriers to the fields died of | |
cold and exhaustion in the high mountains. No doubt the Skipper was | |
being only an opportunist in going recruiting when he found himself | |
at the remote end of the Territory; but also he could profit by the | |
venture even if he did not get recruits, because we were paying him | |
ten dollars a day while he found out if men were available. | |
But that was not what was making us savage; it was the low fellow's | |
attempt to slip off without us. | |
The one full-length sentence the Skipper had honored us with in the | |
last eight hours was a warning not to get nosy in this village. Any | |
violation of taboo would ruin his business. But in the end it was | |
our quite unintentional nosiness which indirectly promoted it--as far | |
as his business went. | |
At first we wandered about, innocently trying to look up into the | |
closed houses through the cracks in the floors--for the huts were on | |
piles like the plantation houses. We were at the far end of the | |
village taking a photograph of an architectural detail (which | |
happened to be an ingenious vine-rope hinge of a door) when that door | |
opened--ever so little; just about an inch and a half. A glittering | |
eye looked out of the blackness at about head height. So it was an | |
adult--but male or female? We took a chance. Calmly we lifted our | |
pyjama shirts and exhibited proof of our right to female society. | |
There was a long wait; then the crack of the door slowly widened and | |
was finally jerked back and a woman pushed out. Another woman was | |
behind her, and another, and two more. Their general good nature led | |
us to believe that we were the first white women these Maries had | |
ever seen. But there was nothing we could paint of that. We | |
photographed it instead, and it was at this point the luluai [leader] | |
came sprinting up. He couldn't speak any pidgin English that we | |
could understand, but he LOVED cameras and he did not have to say it. | |
... we had accomplished in half an hour with the camera what the | |
Skipper had not been able to do in several hours. | |
The whole business of recruiting is nothing more complex than making | |
a friend of the chief or luluai of the village, who then persuades | |
village men to join the recruiter. The maximum value of a gift to a | |
headman is set by law, because the chiefs bribed beyond resistance | |
could be persuaded to turn over to the recruiter men who were not | |
willing to be recruited. | |
In this village it happened that the chief's weakness was having a | |
camera pointed at him; and we had the camera. | |
If there is anything less delightful than walking up mountains on | |
blisters, it is having a rest and then walking down on the same | |
blisters. | |
# Chapter 29 | |
Kieta, as a settlement, was not particularly noteworthy. But Kieta | |
to us looked like a beautiful metropolis after our seeing only one | |
house at a time for so many months. | |
[The author and her assistant got foot infections as a result of the | |
damage done during the Skipper's "death march" into the mountains on | |
the recruiting trip.] | |
This settlement never had any more than 25 residents, yet there were | |
as many rungs on the social ladder as there were residents. The | |
untouchables were the Chinese, the missionaries, and Americans, | |
whenever present. [Suffice it to say, the author and her assistant | |
were treated with outright aggression. | |
[They had trouble finding anywhere to stay. Nobody wanted to rent | |
them a room. The radio operator had an enormous house with rows of | |
bedrooms, none of them occupied but his own.] But obviously nothing | |
short of outright seduction could get this young man to make | |
questionable women of us [by letting them stay in one of his empty | |
rooms.] | |
[Finally, a couple from Rabaul made a special trip down to the wharf | |
to ask the author and her assistant to be their guests.] | |
# Chapter 30 | |
For Rabaul was that island metropolis, the one big settlement in all | |
Melanesia where we had long expected to replenish our bleeding store | |
of gold. An acute reminder of the emergency was that the Nakapo did | |
not choose to sail. For two more days the vessel lay off that | |
hateful little settlement of Kieta, during which time we dared not | |
move far from the deck or beach because the Skipper said every next | |
minute was the one in which we were leaving. He was waiting for | |
business... | |
On the second night we went ashore for dinner. The wireless operator | |
sent a message that he wanted us to meet some friends... They were | |
three young men, all in government service, and before the evening | |
was over they had got together a splendid scheme for | |
Expotitions-in-distress. They would provide us with a complete field | |
outfit--camp stretchers, mosquito nets, cooking gear... and we could | |
set up camp in the government rest house of the nearest village to | |
Kieta. ... but our hosts were "gamin." It couldn't be done [because | |
of various patriarchal social customs.] | |
Well, it COULD be done--unless the mute district officer did refuse | |
us permission to use a rest house; all we had to do was obtain camp | |
gear, and we could but that. It would be fairly inexpensive living, | |
we should be independent, and by living right in the village we | |
should become quickly acquainted with our subjects and have less | |
trouble getting models. There was just one hitch of convincing the | |
district officer that we were not fragile ladies but tough | |
headhunters. [They did not accomplish this and they ended up getting | |
back on the Nakapo for Rabaul.] | |
# Chapter 31 | |
The hook of land on the inner shore of which Rabaul is situated is | |
called Crater Peninsula, the bar formed by the crook being the | |
gigantic crater of an old volcano. In the middle of the bar there | |
are some little "beehive" islands which appear and disappear at whim, | |
indicating that something is still going on down there in the water, | |
and to the south, still in Blanche Bay, is another island called | |
Vulcan. The first thing the nose of a sensitive visitor sniffs as he | |
[or she] enters the bay, if the wind is right, is the stench of | |
sulphur and brimstone which rises in steam from these safety valves | |
of the volcanic region. | |
The government reports show about twenty healthy earthquakes a year, | |
disturbances violent enough to receive official attention, which | |
means the [unreported] tremors one feels every few days are just | |
normal. | |
There is no doubt that living in Rabaul is something like living in a | |
reducing vibrator. There is something in this "uncanny quiet," an | |
electric charge that is not the invigorating kind but rather the | |
tenseness that sometimes makes small boys suddenly take a crack at a | |
glass window with a rock, as much to their [own] surprise as | |
anybody's. | |
When we said we wished we had been at the party [in a cheap hotel] | |
instead of having been merely shaken by it, the little man was so | |
pleased that he made us an additional present of some small gold-ore | |
nuggets fresh from the mountains of New Guinea. | |
And it was this man, learning my name, who brought about quite an | |
unusual encounter. That night at dinner he brought to our table | |
another old prospector who shyly asked how I spelled my name. He had | |
once prospected in Alaska and had known a Lewis Mytinger who had come | |
to Juneau with a gold washer, and the two had known one another | |
intimately before the latter was drowned. Lewis Mytinger was my | |
father, whom I had never known. He had invented a gold washer and | |
taken it to Juneau to interest investors. And from this miner here | |
in far-away New Guinea I learned things about the last few months of | |
my father's life and the details of the way he met his death that | |
even my mother did not know. "You look just like your father," the | |
miner said. "I think I would have known you were Lew's daughter even | |
if I had not yet heard your name--especially meeting you here, at | |
another gold field." And probably in the same kind of hotel. | |
It was the American recruiters who, in our ninth hour of despair, | |
steered us to the Ambassador. The name, Ambassador, was entirely | |
humorous for the place was a huge frame building, as spacious as a | |
hangar and looking very much like one, which had been built by the | |
government as the expropriation department to handle the land tangle | |
when the Australians took over during the last war. Offices were | |
partitioned off on both sides of a long hall, and at one end was a | |
big open space, the size of Roseland, which was not the one | |
restaurant in town... The rooms were so much the size of largish | |
stalls that some humorist had lettered the names of famous race | |
horses on a few doors. There was, of course, no furniture, no | |
running water; the toilet was off the restaurant (through the | |
kitchen), and the wash-wash houses were in the read on a court. But | |
the rent was only twenty dollars a month and we expected to furnish | |
our stall with a camp outfit. We could eat one meal a day in the | |
restaurant and lift our hands to help ourselves in private without | |
the aid of a [servant], or endangering white prestige [the | |
sensibilities of other white people in the community]. | |
The way for a woman to is a stranger to tackle the social ladder in | |
any British colonial settlement is a cut-and-dried system. She | |
starts at the top simply by leaving her card at the Residency. This | |
is merely paying one's formal respects, and the card leaver must, | |
under no circumstances, be seen in the flesh by anyone but a servant. | |
Literally it means, "I have arrived and am ready for recognition." | |
Presumably there are spies who then track one down and report whether | |
one is eligible for (a) dinner, (b) luncheon, (c) tea, or (d) total | |
eclipse. There must be some way of finding out about the newcomer | |
other than by a mere name on a card. | |
The Expotition had no card and it had sore feet and Namanula Hill was | |
an alp which no bicycle we could pedal would go up. And it was also | |
very hot and we had no calling clothes which were fit to be seen even | |
by a servant. The whole business seemed a little strained to an | |
American anyway--to hire a car to climb an alp to deliver a card | |
which we did not have, in order to be followed by spies who would | |
report that we were living in a horse stall. | |
However, we had to do it if we expected to get any portrait orders. | |
[Later, New Guinea's first lady invited them to dinner without any | |
card calling. She had already heard about them through the | |
grapevine. She also ordered their first portrait job.] | |
# Chapter 32 | |
With no portrait orders coming in yet we neither dared afford nor | |
wanted to eat more than one meal at day at Popeye's, the restaurant | |
in the building, for the food there was useless from the point of | |
view of both taste and nourishment. [Eventually their servant, | |
"borrowed" from a friend, volunteered to shop for groceries and cook | |
their meals.] | |
... the trays were neat and the fruit mountainous, and we never again | |
got dysentery while Tombat fed us. | |
Instead, we got... "fis' mouth" [fish mouth]--from eating too much | |
fish or else the wrong kind. The curse came in the form of little | |
white bubbles that broke out, not only around the mouth but around | |
the eyes. It was a maddening itch much like poison ivy infection, | |
though luckily it lasted only a few days at siege. | |
[I wonder whether "fish mouth" is the same thing as Scombroid Fish | |
Poisoning.] | |
# Chapter 35 | |
I had found a retreat in the Chinese cemetery behind town to which I | |
went occasionally for the sweet stillness that was nowhere else in | |
Rabaul. One could visualize the long-dead [Asians] beneath those big | |
green mounds, and one was reminded of the precious life still | |
ours--and what to do with it. And I needed stimulus these days. | |
Frankly I was weary. It is all great fun to travel sight-seeing | |
through the tropics, but to work is another matter--when the heat | |
makes one feel drugged, unable to think, and when each siege of | |
malaria leaves one a little more slowly. Then there was the eternal | |
bucking of unexpected obstacles. [Nobody was ordering portraits, | |
because her first commission had gone badly.] And if this stalemate | |
continued we were doomed as an Expotition. Our limit was the moment | |
when our funds got down to the price of a ticket home, and that was | |
within sight. | |
But I always came away from the cemetery with my fur smoothed down; | |
the one thing we possessed which was not in that quiet green terminal | |
was breath. And that was something positive. | |
That we could not understand their kind of intellect did not prove | |
that it did not exist ant was not equal to our own in its own way. | |
Our models had sores and flies, but we had them too, and ants in our | |
pants as well--ourselves having pants, which the natives had probably | |
tried as a garment themselves and discarded generations ago as being | |
ant traps. | |
# Chapter 36 | |
Our artistic swan song of the Territory was an attempt to paint a | |
sing-sing [a dance], and for even attempting that we deserve some | |
credit. | |
There are generally two kinds of sing-sing: the dance and feat and | |
chanting that attend the coming of age ceremonies of girls, and | |
betrothals, marriages, and births, which are witnessed by all the | |
villagers; and those other secret dances which have to do with men's | |
clubs and are not always initiation ceremonies, but may be the | |
whooping up for a raid, or celebration of a successful one. These | |
latter, the native women and outsiders never see. | |
Another kind of sing-sing has an innocent origin purely social, and | |
may be witnessed by anyone. The theme is some current event. When | |
we left a plantation in the Solomon Islands, the native wife of a | |
planter, accompanied by all her female relatives, collected on the | |
veranda to watch us pack. For hours they sat without a word, | |
fascinated by the wealth that went into the trunks. Margaret brought | |
things while I fitted them into their places that I knew so well by | |
this time. There was probably a certain rhythm to the endless | |
business. Finally we came to the clothes trunk and after | |
half-a-dozen garments had been folded down into it one of the women | |
began to hum with her lips closed. | |
The women stopped to laugh hysterically with the others and then | |
started humming again, hanging on to the sixth note each time she | |
came to it. Presently, another woman joined in, starting on the | |
fourth note, repeating the same melody. Another woman came in and | |
then all were humming. It was a kind of protracted round, like | |
"Three Blind Mice." They hummed for a long time, good straight | |
missionary harmony, and then suddenly the first woman broke into a | |
solo, still using only harmonics of the six notes. "My word," she | |
improvised, "the Missus are going away. They are going... going. | |
They put into the box the white dress, the white dress, the white | |
dress. [Three dresses.] They are going away on a launch. They are | |
going away on the steamer. The tall one who makes pictures, the | |
small one who sings with her teeth [that is, whistles]. My word, | |
they go tomorrow." | |
The music did not come to an end there. The humming continued as an | |
interval and by and by, ever so casually, another woman began her | |
story of our going, going. And so on through the whole afternoon | |
until the lock of the last trunk was snapped. There was one | |
deviation; the woman who started the sing got up on one occasion and | |
shyly went through an awkward pantomime of bringing things and | |
placing them in a box, her walking back and forth being a business of | |
standing in the same place and coming down on the veranda hard with | |
her heels, which seems to be the universal Melanesian dance step. | |
# Chapter 37 | |
But on account of the earthquake we made a discovery that was | |
serious. When we moved into the Ambassador we had unrolled and hung | |
the pictures face to the wall, around the walls of the storeroom so | |
that they would be straight while they finished drying out. And now, | |
as a result of last night's shaking, they were all lying crumpled on | |
the floor. But it was not the wrinkling that had done the damage. | |
It was in picking them up that we saw what Rabaul had done, what the | |
weeks of exposure to the sulphuric atmosphere can do to paint. Every | |
portion that had been painted with lead colors had been affected. | |
White areas had turned golden yellow, but all colors mixed with white | |
had dulled and in most cases turned darker. Some greens had turned | |
black even where the paint had been used pure and, of course, the | |
madder red, which I had not expected to hold up anyway (for the | |
madders are merely a glaze), had faded out of existence. The chance | |
in our pictures and our dismay were about equal. | |
Ordinary sulphur discoloration on paintings happens... right here in | |
our own country, where sulphur dioxide in the air is created in the | |
cities by coal-burning house and factory furnaces. To clean it off, | |
picture restorers charge a great deal of money to run over the | |
paintings with a lump of fresh rye bread, a slice of raw potato, or | |
onion. Only don't start cleaning your paintings with any of these | |
vegetables, because if the discoloration has penetrated the varnish | |
to the pigment beneath, the varnish has to be removed, and this is a | |
delicate job for which restorers deserve a great deal of money. | |
[Nothing they tried helped, until they tried soap and water. It | |
brightened the paintings somewhat.] | |
The paintings were dried, not only on the paint side, but more | |
thoroughly on the back, and then they were given several coats of | |
good old deck spar varnish. And as an extra precaution against | |
mold-rot, after several coats of varnish with their seasoning of | |
insects, the canvases were put out in the sun again face down to bake | |
the back. | |
... we had to decide between retracing our steps (the Solomon | |
Islands) under the ideal conditions of being able to work wherever | |
the expedition schooner anchored, and having it as a permanent base; | |
going on to the unknown in Papua and the Dutch Indies; or going home | |
via the Philippines, with the work unfinished. We made one of those | |
heroic decisions that happen only in fiction. We decided to take a | |
chance--go west. [to Papua] | |
[They planned to ship the paintings back home. But the natives went | |
on strike for higher wages one morning shortly after the author | |
departed. The paintings were forgotten and left in a storeroom for | |
months. | |
The Judge and the newspaper Editor got into a dispute. The Editor | |
used the paintings as an instrument for spite. Ultimately, he hid | |
them before he himself disappeared. | |
An eruption destroyed Vulcan island.] | |
The explosion of Matapi was a hundred times more violent than that of | |
Vulcan the day before, and it rose a mile in the air at the speed of | |
a torpedo. The geyser was solid black mud, a fountain of mud that | |
rained down on the peninsula. | |
All vegetation looked as if it had been struck by poison gas. In the | |
harbor all light craft had been sunk, including the precious Nakapo, | |
and everything remaining above water was under four feet of mud and | |
pumice. | |
The two major eruptions continued through Monday, but the wind was | |
offshore and the mud and pumice were being carried away from Rabaul. | |
Our Melanesian paintings escaped the mud bath on the peninsula. They | |
had long since been located by the loyal Judge and were safely in our | |
possession when this district fulfilled its promise of "becoming the | |
theatre of some horrible catastrophe." | |
author: Mytinger, Caroline, 1897-1980 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Caroline_Mytinger | |
LOC: DU850 .M9 | |
source: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.177751 | |
tags: ebook,travel | |
title: Headhunting in the Solomon Islands | |
# Tags | |
ebook | |
travel |